The Ledger, every show

“Yes, I think we should. I think it needs to be way highly regulated.”

“Are all of our software companies going to be completely disrupted and all of them go away? And like, I don't know, like I'm taking a stand that it's they're not. But like, I guess I could be totally wrong.”

“And we had a rule at Bessemer. If the company called you back, it really sucked. It was the CEO you call every two days for a month. That's the CEO you want to get on the phone.”

“If you build a business with 20 of revenue, you're growing 30. And you've only burned three million bucks. You're doing something right. And if we can get in there and own preferred stock at the top of the cap structure, and it's recurring and has 80% gross ma…”

“I actually have a handwritten thank you note tracker that I get for every employee at the firm, and I assure you, if a twenty-two-year-old analyst wants to get called out in front of 85 people, I have no problem doing it.”

“We've, I think we've only lost all of our money, like in one deal ever.”

“Probably a third of our exits have been secondaries.”

“We think a lot of firms do a really, really good job on the buy. Very, very few firms do a very good job on the sell, like, knowing when to sell, pressuring to sell, and we would tell you that the private equity funds tend to do a much better job on the sell t…”

“If we do like an eight criteria deal versus like a five criteria deal, there's like actually no correlation to like, it was a better deal.”

“We actually, I, for one, strongly believe that if you think in If your budget in twenty-twenty-four for twenty-twenty-six was to have a 150 software engineers, you should still have a 150 software engineers, because those software engineers can be, like, expon…”

“So like capital's everywhere, but like four companies control distribution. So like good luck going to build a giant internet company. And right now there's just like too much money chasing You know, at least in Silicon Valley, two few great things.”

“And actually that like agents appear to consume more resources and actually people. And so like the, some of these consumption based models, like the growth of companies”

“These companies aren't going anywhere. Like, the incumbents have distribution, Data and balance sheets. You know, it's a fool's errand to think all these companies are going to go away.”

“ByteDance Grows at, you know, 30% a year with massive profits.”

“If you don't have earnings or EBITDA, there is no floor in a lot of these things.”

“Where I think the biggest opportunity to disrupt incumbents today is Soft software, tech enabled services, any company, it actually can be a manufacturing company, it doesn't matter, any company with a bunch of leverage on it, because those companies don't hav…”

“Mark Zuckerberg deserves to go for it. Like, he's, it's his business. He built the damn business. Like, I don't think you really have much to say to be like, oh, don't bet on the guy. And by the way, he kind of has to because his competitors are doing the same…”

“I think we've had, like, two 10 X's ever, or something like that, but we've only had, like, you know, One or two zeros ever.”

“So if you, if the company calls you back, it's like, hang up the phone. It's the CEO you call every two days for a month. That's who you want to get on the phone.”

“It's incredible, like, why don't, it's amazing that people are listening to some random research firm versus listening to people like Stan Druckenmiller, Howard Marks, Ken Griffin, Steve Cohen, like, Mark Benioff, people like Mark Zuckerberg you know, Jensen W…”

“This is nothing like this. This is like amateur hour. This is like nothing. Like, this isn't even volatile compared to like what was going on back then.”

“A lot of these, like, companies will retrain people. They'll do different things. It's a, it's remarkable throughout history. There's been, like, lots of technological disruption over the last hundred years, and, like, people find new things.”

“Just look how much, like, stock option dilution there is at a bunch of these big Silicon Valley companies. It's not as bad outside of Silicon Valley, but, like, the dilution is real.”

“Marks are opinions. DPI is math.”

“Probably a third of our deals have been secondary sales.”

“I do think that investors are very, very, very focused on DPI now.”

“As a new relative upcomer in the first couple funds, you can actually generate amazing APIs. It's a game you can play.”

“I truly think that's why Sequoia and Benchmark are great and Index are great because they help founders and entrepreneurs recruit amazing talent and people want to work for those funds portfolio companies.”

“It's the most important number in tech companies. Gross dollar retention.”

“18 is good. Like, you want like 90%. Anything less than 18, we won't touch.”

“Listen, if your plan is to try to stay private forever, you're just not for us. Like, we just don't want to invest in you.”

“I mean, it's kind of silly. It's like, do these private market investors look at the public markets?”

“In the world where, like, ETFs and passives have become huge and the number of fundamental investors is, like, shrinking, I don't think you want to be a two to, ideally, you don't want to be, like, a two to three billion dollar company, but I don't think there…”

“I think when you get, like, sub a billion or two billion, it's, like, it's kind of just, like, a pain in the ass to be a public company investor, but you can do it. Like, who says you can't do it? I actually, we wish probably more would. Why? Because they'd be…”

“And so, like, the hardest decision is, actually, the hardest decision was, did we, should we have in, like, nine, 2017 and 18, like, and 16, like, paid, like, when everybody, when we were paying five to seven times revenues for software companies, and Iconic c…”

“The incumbents usually win. It's customer distribution.”

“The problem with the IPO market is actually totally fine. If you look at IPO performance of companies, they've actually done pretty well versus opening day prices.”

“We think there's a lot of really good funds that are really good at investing. We think there's a lot of people that are not very good at selling.”

“Are your revenues today greater than your historical cash burn? Cumulatively. Not raised. If you've raised 80, but only burned 20, and you have a forty million dollar revenue business, like that's a great business. But we're looking for like a one to one ratio…”

“And our model is like, we're going to be 95% backed by individuals and we're going to treat those individuals like gold.”

“Well I would tell you that we have two customers. Founders, but more importantly, LPs, because if you do not have LPs, you do not have a business.”

“So like, we run our business trying to figure out how do we have 97%, how do we keep up 97% gross dollar retention, not net, gross, With LPs.”

“A hundred percent. I just have seen how hard people in China work at some of these tech companies.”

“Hong Kong, for sure. Like, by the way, Tencent's listed in Hong Kong. It's gigantic. Hong Kong, a hundred percent.”

“This is the same size business in terms of earnings grows faster.”

“Not bearish on crypto, but, like, I think it reminds me a little bit of the tulip craze that you can't actually use crypto to go buy, like, when you could, if I could go buy a Tesla with crypto, it'd be amazing. If I could go to Amazon and use Bitcoin, it'd be…”

“A hundred percent. When? I don't know. It might be like a slow You know, it might be like a slow hole in the canoe, but eventually, yes, they will, yes, a hundred percent.”

“And I didn't frankly think there was much difference between Bessemer and Sequoia and Kleiner at the time, and General Atlantic and TCV, other than some people wrote bigger checks and smaller checks.”